It’s been a few months since the mHealth Summit in December, giving me a little time to contemplate and write down my thoughts regarding the last event.

I must say, I had a strange feeling this time when I attended. At first I couldn’t really put my finger on what was different or missing. Eventually, I realized that I reserved myself for a whole week to attend an event that was divided in half. The first part of the week mainly targeted commercial entities, businesses that were there to demonstrate their latest products and sell. Their exhibits are grandiose; they have lots of products on display and sales people. This is where partnerships are made, deals are started and deals are closed, not to mention big parties.

The latter half of the week was left for the development sector: NGOs, nonprofits and social entrepreneurs, the folks working on the ground, deploying pertinent services to developing countries. They are more group discussion-based, strategic, and rallying to work together and speak best practices, but partnerships and deals are made here too. More →

According to The Aspen Institute, the artisan and crafts industry is the second largest employer in the developing world. When Ella Peinovich-Griffith, Gwendolyn Floyd and Catherine Mahugu completed the application for the Vodafone Americas Foundation Wireless Innovation Project in 2014, they believed in the potential of their mobile-based enterprise tool to endow rural artisans with equitable, sustainable livelihoods. And soon after, Soko upped their efforts to reach the next phase: a “women-run and operated e-commerce marketplace for the developing world.” More →

Mobile innovation for social good takes many forms—and one that the Vodafone Americas Foundation has supported since its creation is the development of mobile apps. But there’s much more to developing an app then putting code to computer. In partnership with VAF, YTH (Youth Tech Health) developed critical guidelines to help developers keep in mind important security factors to help safeguard their users information. More →

Since MoboSens won the Vodafone Americas Foundation Wireless Innovation Project (WIP) in 2013, the startup has made huge progress developing its mobile phone sensor technology for water testing and expanding its uses even further. Mobosens has also partnered with major environmental organizations to apply its technology not only in the developing world, but also in the U.S. Midwest. Our blog post in August of 2014 detailed how far the company had come in only a year.

As we head into 2015, the company continues to make great strides to help enable citizen scientists around the world in their efforts for cleaner water. In the past six months, MoboSens designed, manufactured and tested its multiplexed water sensors for nitrate, nitride, ammonia and phosphate for mobile phones. The company also worked on improving the sensor storage condition in the sensor to prolong the sensor’s lifetime. In addition to these technology developments, MoboSens is gaining traction in mobile phone sensor use in the U.S. Midwest and is exploring the application of the company’s technology in the medical field. More →

My business partner, Rick Moss, and I started our venture firm, Better Ventures, in 2011 as a three-month accelerator program (then called Hub Ventures). With our combined experience in customer development, network building, and fundraising, we recently envisioned an open source model that could engage the wider entrepreneurial community. We felt that setting up shop in Oakland was a natural fit, given the burgeoning community of impact-minded founders in the East Bay. Oakland is the center of an emerging clustering of mission-oriented companies, such as Sungevity and Revolution Foods. In addition, renowned institutions like UC Berkeley have a community stronghold here. The soulfulness, diversity, and sense of social and environmental justice make it a unique entrepreneurial hot spot. More →

When they entered the Vodafone Americas Foundation’s Wireless Innovation Project last year, the goal of the team behind MobileODT was to eradicate cervical cancer through an application that turns any digital camera, whether on a smartphone or endoscope, into a device capable of detecting early signs of cancer. Since winning first place in the 2014 competition, it has strengthen the company’s goal to continue to be help to save lives and help medical programs become more efficient. More →

Total Prizes of $600,000 Awarded to Mobile and Wireless Solutions for Global Community Impact

The Vodafone Americas Foundation has launched its seventh annual Wireless Innovation Project™ (WIP), offering applicants the opportunity to win a total prize fund of $600,000 for innovative mobile solutions that have high potential to solve critical global issues. The Director of the Vodafone Group Foundation, Andrew Dunnett, officially announced the opening of the competition at the Social Innovation Summit in San Francisco on November 19. More →

Vodafone Americas Foundation sits down with newly appointed Chairman and President of the Board of Directors, Chuck Pol, to ask him about his new role and what excites him about mobile innovation for social impact.

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Mobile phones are reaching an unprecedented number of individuals in regions such as Africa and Southeast Asia, with nearly 880 million new connections expected by 2020 (according to a 2014 report by GSMA). This penetration into impoverished urban centers and remote rural villages means that individuals formerly cut-off from basic financial services such as cash flow statements or credit can now be reached through a touch of a button. InVenture is leveraging this technological transformation to make financial tracking and loan applications as easy as possible for the emerging middle class. More →

MoboSens, the mobile water sensor, checking in from Champaign, Illinois, the home of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

MoboSens’s goal when entering the Vodafone Americas Foundation Wireless Innovation Project was to do what they can to help bring this technology to more deserving and curious citizen scientists around the world… and as a result of winning the WIP in 2013, MoboSens is on its way to accomplish this goal. More →